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The Wilderness : Undelivered Lectures - Ayegl Sava

The Wilderness

By: Ayegl Sava

Paperback | 1 February 2025

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A deeply felt chronicle into the wilderness of the first forty days of new motherhood.

In the final weeks of her pregnancy, Ayşegül Savaş becomes fascinated by the mythology around the first forty days after giving birth, and the invisible beings that are said to surround the mother. “In Turkish, we speak of extracting the forty days, like a sort of exorcism. My grandmothers assure me that it will all get better after forty days are out.” A friend lends a book that suggests forty days of rest and fortifying broths and avoiding wind and cold. 

In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, forty days are seen as a period of trial and transformation. They are often journeys into the wilderness and “its vast and unruly territories.” When the baby arrives, Savaş charts her own path into the wilderness of new motherhood—a space of contradiction, of chaos and care, mothering and being mothered. “What is the trial of the postpartum crossing?” writes Savaş. “Where will mother and child emerge once they have left the wild?”

Industry Reviews

Praise for The Wilderness

"As a personal chronicle, it's arresting and deep, and makes for a rewarding entry into the growing pantheon of postpartum literature."-Publishers Weekly

Praise for Ayseguel Savas

"The Anthropologists is yet another gorgeous, gorgeous book from Ayseguel Savas: she is an author who simply, and astoundingly, knows. Savas knows hope. Savas knows despair. Savas knows joy, and malaise, and laughter, and curiosity. There are worlds inside of Savas' prose, and The Anthropologists is both a bright light and a map for how to be. A massively heartening achievement."-Bryan Washington, author of Lot, Memorial, and Family Meal

"Like Walter Benjamin, Ayseguel Savas uncovers trapdoors to bewilderment everywhere in everyday life; like Henry James, she sees marriage as a mystery, unsoundably deep. The Anthropologists is mesmerizing; I felt I read it in a single breath."-Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness

"[Savas] writes with both sensuality and coolness as if determined to find a rational explanation for the irrationality of existence."-Sarah Lyall, The New York Times on Walking on the Ceiling

"Savas' restrained style is a statement in itself, minimalist on the surface but more textured than what first meets the eye."-Michele Filgate, Los Angeles Times on White on White

"A haunting, irresistible novel. I loved this book for its depth and perception, for its beauty and eerie rhythms, but most of all for its wonderfully dream-like spell. It's breathtaking."-Brandon Taylor on White on White

"The entire world of White on White is selectively outlined. What of it exists exists in crisp, clean prose . . . the narrator . . . resists providing the compassion and reassurance Agnes seems to so desperately seek. The results of this thwarted intimacy move the story inexorably toward a finale that, for a book so invested in visual art, feels surprisingly most like an act of literary revenge." -Larissa Pham, New York Times Book Review on White on White

"'In the middle ages, human skin was seen as a blanket stretched to cover a secret, inner life,' writes Ayseguel Savas. Reading White on White for me is like an outer skin which you open layer by layer as you read; gentle, mysterious and profound."-Marina Abramovic on White on White

"Ayseguel Savas' White on White is marvelous, as elegant as an opaque sheet of ice that belies the swift and turbulent waters beneath."-Lauren Groff on White on White

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